Dr. John Bury, a retired Saskatoon physician, writes:

I detect smugness by Canadians in their response to the election of Donald Trump. He may not be someone we would be happy to accept as our leader, but he did attract the support of millions of Americans who had felt left out by the current economic system. This has resulted in the exposure to public discourse of the problems of a mass of the population that has been forgotten in our present euphoria about the concern for the middle class.

For too long, the U.S. and Canada have neglected the needs of the working class – those who work, often precariously, for wages and few benefits.

The effects of globalization, reinforced by free-trade agreements, have seen wellpaying jobs move offshore. This, coupled with a tax system designed to make the rich richer, has led to the one per cent richest Canadians controlling 15.8 per cent of the wealth in society while the poorest half of Canadians have received just 26 per cent of total income growth.

There has been no real increase in median family income since the beginning of

the 1970s. It now takes the incomes of two and sometimes three to bring in what a single (usually male) worker made in the 1960s. This has resulted in an income gap between the richest and the poorest.

It has been shown that the larger the income gap the lower the life expectancy of the community and higher rates of obesity, teen pregnancy and many other markers of the social well-being of a community.

It may well be that Trump will not narrow the gap due to his piratical personality and business approach to governing, but there is no reason why Canada’s more levelheaded culture should not be able to do so. If not, we will pay the price of an unstable, angry society.

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